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rassment. A person, called Peter Gordon, after having been saved by Smollett's humanity from imprisonment and ruin, and after having prevailed upon him to interpose his credit in his behalf to an inconvenient extent, withdrew within the verge of the court, set his creditors at defiance, and treated his benefactor with so much personal insolence, that Smollett chastised him by a beating. A prosecution was commenced by Gordon, and his counsel, Mr Home Campbell, whether in indulgence of his natural rudeness and impetuosity, of which he had a great share, or whether moved by some special enmity against Smollett, opened the case with an unusual torrent of violence and misrepresentation. But the good sense and impartiality of the jury acquitted Smollett of the assault, and he was no sooner cleared of the charge than he sent an angry remonstrance to Mr Home Campbell, demanding that he should retract what he had said to his disadvantage. It does not appear how the affair was settled, but Smollett's manifesto, as a literary curiosity, is inserted in the Appendix to this Memoir. Besides that this expostulation is too long for the occasion, and far too violent to be dignified, Smollett imputes to Campbell the improbable charge, that he was desirous to revenge himself upon the author of Ferdinand Count Fathom, because he had satirized the profession of the law. Lawyers are seldom very sensitive on this head, and if they were, they would have constant exercise for their irritability; since scarce a

[See Appendix, No. I.]

satirical author, of whatsoever description, has concluded his work, without giving cause to the gentlemen of the robe for some such offence, as Smollett supposes Campbell to have taken in the present instance. The manifesto of Smollett contains, however, some just censure on the prevailing mode in which witnesses are treated in the courts of justice in England, who, far from being considered as persons brought there to speak the truth in a matter wherein they have no concern, and who are therefore entitled to civil treatment, and to the protection of the court, on the contrary are often regarded as men standing forward to perjure themselves, and are therefore condemned beforehand to a species of moral pillory, where they are pelted with all the foul jests which the wit of their interrogators can suggest.

Smollett's next task was a new version of Don Quixote, to which he was encouraged by a liberal subscription. The work was inscribed to Don Ricardo Wall, Principal Secretary of State to his Most Catholic Majesty, by whom the undertaking had been encouraged. Smollett's version of this admirable classic is thus elegantly compared with those of Motteux (or Ozell) and of Jarvis, by the late ingenious and amiable Lord Woodhouselee, in his "Essay on the Principles of Translation."

"Smollett inherited from nature a strong sense of ridicule, a great fund of original humour, and a happy versatility of talent, by which he could accommodate his style to almost every species of writing. He could adopt, alternately, the solemn, the lively, the sarcastic, the burlesque, and the vulgar. To these qualifications he joined an inventive genius, and a vigorous imagination. As he possessed talents equal to the

composition of original works of the same species with the romance of Cervantes, so it is not perhaps possible to conceive a writer more completely qualified to give a perfect translation of that novel.

"Motteux, with no great abilities as an original writer, appears to me to have been endowed with a strong perception of the ridiculous in human character, a just discernment of the weaknesses and follies of mankind. He seems likewise to have had a great command of the various styles which are accommodated to the expression both of grave burlesque, and of low humour. Inferior to Smollett in inventive genius, he seems to have equalled him in every quality which was essentially requisite to a translator of Don Quixote. It may, therefore, be supposed, that the contest between them will be nearly equal, and the question of preference very difficult to be decided. It would have been so, had Smollett confided in his own strength, and bestowed on his task that time and labour which the length and difficulty of the work required; but Smollett too often wrote in such circumstances, that despatch was his primary object. He found various English translations at hand, which he judged might save him the labour of a new composition. Jarvis could give him faithfully the sense of his author; and it was necessary only to polish his asperities, and lighten his heavy and awkward phraseology. To contend with Motteux, Smollett found it necessary to assume the armour of Jarvis. This author had purposely avoided, through the whole of his work, the smallest coincidence of expression with Motteux, whom, with equal presumption and injustice, he accuses in his preface of having taken his version wholly from the French.' We find, therefore, both in the translation of Jarvis, and that of Smollett, which is little else than an improved edition of the former, that there is a studied rejection of the phraseology of Motteux. Now, Motteux, though he has frequently assumed too great a license, both in adding to, and retrenching from the ideas of his original, has, upon the whole, a very high degree of merit as a translator. In the adoption of corresponding idioms, he has been eminently fortunate; and, as in these there is no great latitude, he has, in general, preoccupied the appropriate phrases; so that a succeeding translator, who proceeded on the rule of invariably rejecting his phraseology, must have, in general, altered for the worse. Such, I have said, was the rule laid down by Jarvis, and by his copyist and improver, Smollett, who, by thus

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absurdly rejecting what his own judgment and taste must have approved, has produced a composition decidedly inferior, on the whole, to that of Motteux.

"Smollett was a good poet, and most of the verse translations, interspersed through this work, are executed with ability. It is on this head that Motteux has assumed to himself the greatest license. He has very presumptuously mutilated the poetry of Cervantes, by leaving out many entire stanzas from the larger compositions, and suppressing some of the smaller altogether. Yet the translation of those poems which he has retained is possessed of much poetical merit, and, in particular, those verses which are of a graver cast, are, in my opinion, superior to those of his rival.

"On the whole, I am inclined to think, the version of Motteux is by far the best we have yet seen of the romance of Cervantes, and that, if corrected in its licentious observations and enlargements, and in some other particulars, which I have noticed in the course of this comparison, we should have nothing to desire superior to it in the way of translation."

After the publication of Don Quixote, Smollett paid a visit to his native country,' in order to see his mother, who then resided at Scotston, in Peebles-shire, with her daughter and son-in law, Mr and Mrs Telfer. Dr Moore has given us the following beautiful anecdote respecting the meeting of the mother with her distinguished son.

"On Smollett's arrival, he was introduced to his mother, with the connivance of Mrs Telfer, as a gentleman from the West Indies, who was intimately acquainted with her son. The better to support his assumed character, he endeavoured to preserve a serious countenance, approaching to a frown; but, while his mother's eyes were riveted on his countenance, he could not refrain from smiling: She immediately sprung from her chair, and, throwing her arms around his neck, exclaimed, Ah, my son! my son! I have found you at last!' "She afterwards told him, that if he had kept his austere

[Smollett, while in Edinburgh at this time, was introduced to all the leading literati of Scotland, through the friendship of the late Dr Carlyle, minister of Inveresk-a man of great talents, whose Memoirs of himself, still in MS., are said to be highly curious.]

looks, and continued to gloom, he might have escaped detection some time longer; but your old roguish smile,' added she, betrayed you at once.""

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Having revisited the seat of his family, then possessed by his cousin, and spent a day or two at Glasgow, the scene of his early studies and frolics, Smollett returned to England, in order to undertake the direction of the Critical Review, a work which was established under patronage of the Tories and High-Church party; and which was intended to maintain their principles in opposition to the Monthly Review, conducted according to the sentiments of Whigs and Low-Churchmen.

Smollett's taste and talents qualified him highly for periodical criticism, as well as the promptitude of his wit, and the ready application which he could make of a large store of miscellaneous learning and acquired knowledge. But, on the other hand, he was always a hasty, and often a prejudiced judge; and, while he himself applied the critical scourge without mercy, he could not endure that those who felt his blows should either wince or complain under his chastisement. To murmur against his decrees was the sure way to incur further marks of his resentment, and thus his criticism deviated still more widely from dispassionate discussion, as the passions of the reviewer and of the author became excited into a clamorous contest of mutual rejoinder, recrimination, and abuse. Many petty squabbles, which occurred to teaze and embitter the life of Smollett, and to diminish the respectability with which his talents must otherwise have invested him, had their origin in his situation as Editor of

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